At least 42 migrants missing, presumed dead, after boat capsizes off Libya, IOM says

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(Reuters) -At least 42 migrants are missing and presumed dead after a rubber boat capsized off the coast of Libya, the International Organization for Migration said on Wednesday.

Libyan authorities rescued seven survivors who had drifted at sea for six days after the vessel, carrying 49 people, sank near the Al Buri oilfield, an offshore facility north-northwest of the Libyan coast.

IOM said the migrants were from Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Somalia.

Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean since the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Gaddafi during a NATO-backed uprising.

The number of migrants who drowned in the central Mediterranean had already surpassed 1,000 this year, the IOM said, and this week’s incident raised that toll “even further”. Across the entire Mediterranean, there were 2,452 such deaths in 2024, IOM data shows.

“This tragic event, coming just weeks after other deadly incidents off Surman and Lampedusa, underscores the persistent dangers faced by migrants and refugees along the Central Mediterranean Route,” it said in the statement.

In mid-October, a group of 61 bodies of migrants were recovered on the coast west of the capital Tripoli. In September, IOM said at least 50 people had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese refugees caught fire off Libya’s coast.

On Tuesday, several states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.

(Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Ahmed Elumami; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)